Around the Coyote is a fixture of Chicago’s art scene and trendy Wicker Park. Still, it proudly shows its roots — as an upstart, experimental arts festival in a once-emerging neighborhood in 1990 — by constantly adding dimensions and disciplines to its now multimedia scope, a production requiring up to a dozen curators. We checked in with some of this new and returning young programming talent to learn what they picked for this year’s extravaganza, Friday through Sunday in Wicker Park and Bucktown.
PERFORMANCE
Like most of the festival curators, actor and improv artist Cynthia Mariestella Castiglione, 26, talks a lot about integrating disciplines, but this fall the practice takes on a whole meaning for the theater programming. In addition to the regular roster of scenes, stories and other performances, Coyote will debut four collaboration-workshop productions developed over the last few months.
Typically, Castiglione explains, artists submit complete works — written, cast and directed. For the workshop, however, Coyote invited musicians and visual artists, plus improv and sketch groups to work together to create new projects.
“It wasn’t going to be as simple as having artwork hang on the wall behind a play,” she says. “We tried hard to make sure no one felt their art was put on the back burner, so that no one’s work is more important than another’s.”
The results include “Chaos Theory,” a performance by improv group Cornwallis using Caroline Picard’s paintings as both inspiration and set-building props on stage, directed by Chicago Improv Festival co-founder Jonathan Pitts. It’s paired with a comedy from sketch troupe Planet Terrance drawing on Shawn Sticky’s dream-inspired posters and original music by Anu Anouplose. The combo appears at the Shops of Wicker Park (1300 N. Ashland Ave.) 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday.
FILM AND VIDEO
Abigail Satinsky, 25, one of two film curators, partly focused her selections on what she terms DIY media and “activist practices,” where alternative artists essentially harness traditional media means to their distinct creative visions.
In the festival, this manifests as screenings from “Pilot TV,” a temporary autonomous television network that existed for four days in October 2004 and produced 35 documentaries, lectures, TV shows and other “pilots.” (6 p.m. Friday at Around the Coyote Gallery, 1935 1/2 W. North Ave.)
Portable Cinema’s public screening of “Man with the Golden Arm” at the Nelson Algren Triangle Friday offers a sharp critique of the neighborhood’s evolution — or lack thereof. The film, based on Nelson Algren’s book, takes place in Wicker Park and stars Frank Sinatra as a strung-out junkie wandering near the same Milwaukee Avenue, Damen Avenue and Division Street intersection that often still plays host to the area’s abandoned souls. Artist George Wietor, who has created this project with other films in other site-specific locations, provides pocket radios with headphones for a drive-in effect. Since it’s being broadcast, anyone with a radio can tune in, hence the “democratizing” of the airwaves. 8 p.m. Friday.
MUSIC
Jill Katona’s music lineup for the festival takes a fresh spin on the normally rock-centric programming. Driven by less traditional venues newer to Coyote such as Blend coffeehouse, Davenport’s Piano Bar and Piece, genres include jazz, singer-songwriter, reggae, hip-hop, swing and blues.
Katona, 29, who manages local artists and curated two past festivals, selected the mix of about 70 local performers from somewhere between 300 and 500 submissions — forgive her, she stopped counting. But she knows what she likes.
One of her faves is The Carol Williams Group — “she’s an amazing female sax player, which is rare” — performing at Davenport’s Saturday (1383 N. Milwaukee Ave., acts start at 7 p.m.) Another is The Wild Leopardz, a true girl band of three 13-year-olds who open Saturday at 11:30 a.m. on Club Lucky’s outdoor stage (1824 W. Wabansia St.). Club Lucky features headliner Katie Todd later that night.
“I have an ear that can catch a tune a majority will like and not find too eclectic,” Katona says. Mostly, “these local bands don’t get a lot of play and I love that we can feature them.”
WRITTEN WORD
Literature curator and Chicago newcomer Kristi McGuire has her eye on experimental writing for the fall festival. “Last year, my first in Chicago, the Coyote was one of the first events I went to and … it seemed to be missing that community,” says the 27-year-old who’s on the poetry staff at Chicago Review, a literary journal.
As McGuire defines it, experimental writing employs different structures and forms, and blends in disciplines such as film, visual art and performance.
Among the five programs are “Final Proof” and “Visualities,” a paired event 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Around the Coyote Gallery (1935 1/2 W. North Ave.), featuring writer Garin Cycholl’s poetic performance, as well as short fiction and essay readings matched with short films.
The programs are abstract, McGuire says, but not off-putting. “These are works that are very appealing when performed and read.”
PUBLIC ART
Progressive public art is increasingly site-specific (created for one location) and often political, says Ben Schaafsma, one of three festival curators to develop this new addition to the festival. In Wicker Park, that means artwork — whether performance spectacle or installation — that comments on the changing neighborhood identity and street culture, plus the commercialization of community space.
Schaafsma points to the art collective Rebar and their project “PARK[ing],” which will set up temporary gardens in street parking spots around Wicker Park throughout the weekend and feed the meter to “rent” the space for public use. Rich Mansfield and Emily Gustafson will build pigeon condo towers, an elaborate birdhouse subdivision that asks viewers to examine their own housing needs. (The installation opens 6 p.m. Friday and lasts through the weekend outdoors at Wicker Park, 1425 N. Damen Ave.)
“It’s not what you would traditionally think of as public art,” says the 25-year-old graduate student in arts administration and policy at the School of the Art Institute. “It’s deals with privatization of public space … as an example of what may happen in other neighborhoods.”
VISUAL ART
Shannon Stratton, 32, director of non-profit arts gallery and education organization ThreeWalls, is this festival’s guest visual art curator. She selected from 237 artists and about 1,500 works in what she calls a “blind” process, basing her choices simply on the quality of the work, not artists’ statements or resumes.
Also, unlike the shows Stratton curates at ThreeWalls or elsewhere, selections for Coyote aren’t organized around a central question, but rather the best submissions. “It’s a disadvantage to the artists to arbitrarily choose a theme,” she says.
The results, a total of nine artists, include Mara Baker’s fiber and ink abstractions and Iwona Biedermann’s eerie color photographs of a baptism in Lake Michigan. Stratton was also drawn to Craig Anderson’s three-dimensional paintings, Moebius strips constructed from canvas stripped from the frame.
“Curator’s Choice Exhibition” 6 p.m. Friday; on view throughout the weekend at Around the Coyote Gallery, 1935 1/2 W. North Ave.
Around the Coyote
The fall arts extravaganza is back
When: 6 p.m.-2 a.m. Friday, 11a.m.-2 a.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Sunday
Where: Multiple venues throughout Wicker Park/Bucktown. Start the fest and pick up your guide at Around the Coyote Gallery in the Flatiron Arts Building, 1935 1/2 W. North Ave.
Price: $10 day pass, $40 weekend pass; going.com/aroundthecoyote or at the door
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